Journey of a Salesforce Geek

My first real Dreamforce – 2018

This year I got lucky enough to get a full pass for Dreamforce, which meant it was my first time really getting to go – I don’t count just going to the expo. I went for two days, Wednesday and Thursday, as I was not staying in San Fransisco and could only handle so much commute time. Those two days though were plenty eventful!

On day 1, I picked up my pass, which to my luck, since it wasn’t really the first day, there was basically no line. Also, surprisingly, unlike TrailheaDX there was no TSA like security lines to go through. After checking in, I went to the outside area to take a look around – I am pretty sure I hit sensory overload like 10x each day, between the sheer number of people and then the number of things Salesforce had everywhere – your brain basically does not get a break. I had wanted some coffee but the line was wayyy to long, so instead, I went to my first session.

My first session was the developers look into the new connection between Salesforce and Google Sheets. This just knocked my socks off! I cannot wait for this to be available to all. For every time I have had a rep ask me if they could export a listview from Salesforce, there will finally be another answer besides no or create a report! They also made it so that the Google Sheets page can be embedded as a tab right there in Lightning.

The rest of the first day was kind of a mad dash around the 15 buildings to get to a couple of different sessions. I missed some due to the volume of people. Lunch also happened, but it wasn’t great.

Day 2 felt a little better as I think the number of people was already dwindling. I went to see the Community Keynote, which was cool as we got to hear from Lamborgini and see how they incorporate Community and many other Salesforce products into their ecosystem. Lunch that day was better as I ate at a restaurant (we made reservations – highly recommend you do this!)

I think you can take away a lot of what Dreamforce gives without actually going by watching the keynotes and getting the slide decks from your Salesforce rep so I would not say anyone should feel obligated to go, especially if easily claustrophobic – I was totally overwhelmed at times by how many people were everywhere.

Overall, I did enjoy going to Dreamforce and I would go again, but I think staying in the city would help. Also, I only receive my pass one day before the festivities began, which meant my options for signing up through the agenda builder were limited, so hopefully in the future that would be less of an obstacle.